If Facebook is your only social media channels to interact and attract customers, maybe it’s time for you to dive into the world of Instagram. Especially if your customers are in the 15-30 year old demographic.
If you just started with Instagram, we hope to offer you some tips and know-how on running an Instagram account that actually promotes the brand and boost sales! First off, don’t underestimate the visual presentations on Instagram. Indeed, a picture is worth a thousand deals on Instagram. With that in mind and the tips I’m about to reveal, your Instagram will become a powerful tool for your business to grow and reach more customers.
1. Make the Right First Impression with a Detailed Instagram Profile
a. Set up your profile correctly with your brand name so people could find you easily.
b. Use a sentence to summarize what your business or service is about. If you have a value proposition, then great, use it. If you don’t, it’s good to brainstorm with your teammates to compose one, through this exercise, it also lets you know where your brand stands in the business and how it differs from others.
c. Include your website URL in the profile.
2. Take Good Instagram Product Photos, Let the Photos Speak for You
We all know the importance of visuals. Nowadays, it’s the only way to convey the quality of your products because customers can’t actually touch or feel them before they make their purchase.
If you’re struggling with budget and would like to take product photos by yourself, we wrote an article on that to teach you how to get your job done.
Here are some recommendations for you to create an eye-catching account:
- Play with the lighting, angles, and backgrounds to add some spark into your product photos.
- Add text descriptions in your photos.
- Create a consistent color theme and use natural lighting to tone down the photo editing effect.
- Create a consistent Instagram theme, so shoppers can recognize you immediately.
Check out how Reynolds Kitchens’ #EndlessTable campaign revamped its brand on Instagram.
3. Make Good Use of Hashtags to Get Discovered by New Audience on Instagram
a. A hashtag is a useful tool that could double as a keyword search and is an effective way to get more engagement on your post. However, some hashtags are classified as spam. We recommend using 5-10 hashtags and use or create the ones that are relevant to your products, so people can find you more quickly, and translate into more web traffic, engagement, and sales. For example, if you’re a skate brand, use hashtags that describe your product and business, like #skaters, #Streetwear, #skatboards, as well as your own branded hashtag campaign.
b. Create branded hashtags that are relevant to your product series, so shoppers won’t have to go through other irrelevant posts. For example, #ZARASPRING; #ZARAJEANS; #ZARAMENS.
c. Incorporate popular hashtags in your post to get more visibility. Keep an eye on the trending hashtags and use the ones that are relevant to your business. Otherwise, they’ll just seem scammy and doesn’t bring any result.
4. Engage Your Audiences with Instagram Story and Spread Your Brand
We want nothing more than real Instagram followers that actually turns into customers and buy stuff from you. Research has shown that Instagram story’s daily users have hit 500M people, which is pretty amazing considering 1 out of 16 people in the world is using it.
To increase followers, you can introduce your brand through Instagram stories, it allows you to interact with the audience via poll stickers, Q&A, customer-generated content, live video, and more.
If you’re not sure how to do it, check out how other big brands do it, for instance, the home improvement company, Lowe’s, made its video relevant to the brand’s core value of DIY. Through the series of Instagram story, Lowe’s showcases its products and succeeds in making DIY projects feel like a simple undertaking.
If you want to know more about how to create enticing Instagram stories, we made a whole article on it.
5. Add Instagram Geotag to Engage Local Followers
The best thing about Instagram is its global reach when you share something, it could potentially be seen by people in NY to Berlin, and everywhere in between. However, if you’re a local business trying to reach nearby customers, and get more specific with whom you target. Well, make sure to add geotags into your post, so the audience can locate you. Create, sticker, and hashtag your location in your posts and stories to find your customers and local influencers to engage with them.
Last but not least, you can import all your product photos from Instagram into SHOPLINE’s admin panel to save a vast amount of time, and enrich your online store. Here’s how you do it.
Marketing Associate at SHOPLINE. A digital marketing nerd and a podcast fan. You can find her out in the woods once in a while but most of the times she’s glued to her laptop screen indoors.